Speaking of local events…this weekend, starting today, is the Prairie Gate Literary Festival, and on Wednesday the 27th we have Barry Finzel visiting to give the honors lecture on Structural Biology and 3-D modeling, and on Tuesday the 26th Sylke Boyd will be telling us about sun dogs and northern lights and other exotic phenomena at Cafe Scientifique. This place is happening — I hope we can get more locals to stop on by.

Comments

Nah, really, my present is Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival. Should be a ton of fun. I do find it odd that Hamp was a lifelong Republican, but I’m guessing he became a Republican at a young age, when they were still the party of Reconstruction and Lincoln, and morphed into conservatism with them.

Black people in the South used to be Republican. Hampton’s Republicanism wasn’t what we think of as Republican politics today — he was a friend of Nelson Rockefeller, and a member of the NYC Human Rights Commission. Also became a Christian Scientist, so maybe not the best role model for rationality.